Animation Strategies – Run to Jump Cycle
When completing the run and jump cycle I used my run cycle I had animated in 2D (but not submitted) for the lead up and that allowed me to focus on the take off and landing of the jump. I looked at just getting the character to jump on a flat surface and then later decided to exaggerate that by adding a gap and height drop in the landing.
First render test:
(landing not complete – wanting to look at the character landing into a tumble)
Feedback from Aodhan:
- Focus on exaggerating the anticipation of the jump
- Exaggerate the landing
I used Procreate to animate as I didn’t have a screened graphics tablet at home and was really struggling to draw cleanly on Toon boom. I have been using Toon boom for rougher animations to try and get used to using a new software and I haven’t really found that I’ve struggled with it. It reminded me of Aftereffects and after having used AF in college it was easier to pick up Toon Boom. I would have had no issues animating in Toon Boom had I of had a screen tablet at home to allow me to make cleaner lines.
I wanted to have the character tumble when landing so I looked at a lot of parkour videos to look at how to animate this. I did struggle a little with it and if I had more time I would definitely add a lot more focus and detail to this but overall I’m fairly happy with how it turned out.
I also looked at the anticipation of the jump after Aodhan’s advice and decided to hold the frame longer and add an in-between to help with the smoothness.
References:
This was a good reference to see a big gapped jump between objects.